Statement by Mr. Shaogang Zhang, Minister Counsellor of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations, at the High-level Conference on CERF

2009/12/09

Mr. Under-Secretary-General,

The Chinese delegation thanks Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his statement and Under-Secretary-General Mr. John Holmes for putting this high-level meeting together.

The Chinese government highly appreciates the outstanding performance of CERF over the past year and takes this opportunity to reiterate its support for the Fund. China consistently supports the United Nations in playing a more important role in international humanitarian affairs. The establishment of CERF is of great significance for strengthening the UN system’s responsiveness to humanitarian needs and improving the global coordination mechanism for humanitarian assistance.

Since 2006，CERF has gained extensive political and financial support from the international community. Its goal of raising 450 million US dollars was achieved in 2008．Building on the first independent assessment, CERF has taken a series of improvement measures this year to ensure provision of humanitarian assistance to disaster-stricken countries in a more timely, reliable, transparent and effective manner. We appreciate these efforts.

As one of the founding donor countries and beneficiaries of CERF, China will, as always, support the work of the Fund. As usual, we plan to provide a contribution of 500,000 US dollars to CERF in 2010, which is subject to approval by the National People's Congress of China.